Paul Krugman: We’re In Big Trouble If Romney Elected

At that time, Krugman warned Obama in an editorial, that his stimulus was too small and would only slow down the country’s economic comeback. As it turned out, he was right and he’s right about the country being in trouble if Romney is elected.

If Mitt Romney is elected president, the U.S. will experience an economic disaster the likes of which have been recently seen in Ireland, according to Paul Krugman.

“Ireland is Romney economics in practice,” the Nobel-Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist said on the Colbert Report on Monday. “I think Ireland is America’s future if Romney is president.” (h/t Politico.)

“They’ve laid off a large fraction of their public workforce, they’ve slashed spending, they’ve had extreme austerity programs, they haven’t really raised taxes on corporations or the rich at all, they have 14 percent unemployment, 30 percent youth unemployment, zero economic growth,” Krugman said.

Conservatives like Romney loved Ireland’s economic program before the country fell into a depression, in part because it had “the lowest corporate tax rates,” Krugman said on the Colbert Report. Ireland fell into recession again at the end of last year.

After Krugman finished his criticism of Romney’s economic plan, there was a pause as Colbert tried to think of a good retort. “Well the Irish can handle it, OK? The Irish do very well in bleak, depressing times,” Colbert said. “They’ve got those jigs and everything that they do.”

Funny no one seems to have the audio on these comments. I doubt they actually occured. Further, Romney absolutely never said he wanted to lay off fire, police, and teachers. Finally, unfortunately Krugman and readers of these liberal sites don’t know that municipal governements pay fire, police, and teachers salaries, not the federal governemnt. In the 2009 the federal government sent billions of borrowed money to states who in turn sent it to the localities so they could use it for these salaries because they needed to skim off the union dues for the democrat political campaigns. Didn’t help much in 2010 but good try!